Today is Martin Luther King Jr's day. I was originally going to include his speech (or at least an excerpt of it as it is over 16 minutes long), instead, I'm just going to direct you to www.americanrhetoric.com where you can download the "I Have a Dream" speech in its entirety. Unfortunately the sound quality is pretty low and I think it's in mono.
I don't know if you remember, but this famous speech was the subject of many years of legal battle between the Estate of Martin Luther King Jr and CBS. The Estate argues that the work is copyrighted and CBS should pay them a license fee per usage and CBS argues that it's public performance and should be in the public domain.
The case closed as both side settled out of court, but personally I think it should be free to use by any media to remind us about civil rights and racial injustice.
Anyway, to tie today's holiday to music, we're going to talk about "Happy Birthday" by Stevie Wonder. This song was written and released in 1980 and appears on his album Hotter than July under the Motown label.
The song was used to campaign for a national holiday, and six years later, the United States established the observation on the 3rd Monday of January (King's birthday is January 15).
Bonus: Download a Crowd Control remix of "Happy Birthday" on their myspace.com.
01/21/2008 10:42:31 vu my♥posts 
www.steviewonder.net
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